


Similarities

by Prix



Category: Fate/Zero
Genre: Bonding, F/M, Honesty, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-03 06:08:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19457965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: She is nothing like him, is she?





	Similarities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scribblemyname](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this fic! I wasn't quite sure where I was going with it, but I think I like where it went with getting them to meet each other on level ground.

There was a moment, long ago or moments ago - that seemed hard to remember now - when Artoria Pendragon had decided that she despised the so-called King of Heroes. A part of her had questioned his title, but the longer this bloody, lawless war continued, peeling away layer after layer of its own skin with blasphemous glee, she had begun to wonder if Heroes weren't self-professed gods to a man. In that way, the title suited him. 

She still glares at him while they are in close proximity. It seems like clinging to a shred of dignity. He seems much less haughty than when she had first laid eyes on him. She wonders which impression is false - the first one which had led her to hate him or the one which she holds now which almost makes her want to trust him. 

He claims to wish to  _ honor _ her, and she knows what he means by that. What she still fails to understand is why he clings to such an inappropriate and pointless aspiration after everything that has happened. She has a harder time despising him for it now, though. She tries to swallow down what that might mean if she ever spoke it aloud. 

Perhaps the most dangerous thing about sitting beside this Archer in an empty, desecrated church is that they have both lost things in this war now. 

Saber looks up toward the altar of the church. In the dim light, it still looks like a place of worship to her weary eyes. In her time, they certainly hadn’t had finer even during times of peace. Yet there is something about the closed space that bothers her. The carpeting on the floor seems to still reek with the scent of blood, dust, and overly perfumed flowers. 

“You know who killed him, don’t you?” she ventures to ask. Again she swallows against a dry throat. She clears her throat as if trying to deepen her voice, though she does not try to sound like a man in this time and place. 

The Archer sniffs with nonchalance. She glances over at him only to catch him also staring along the same line of sight, up toward the bloodstained altar. 

“It shouldn’t make a difference,” he says. 

The Priest, the Overseer of this whole affair, is dead. 

He saw his killer. His throat is stained with the imprint of their large hands. His eyes were still open when he was found. 

It seemed that Archer’s Master had some connection to this man. Of course, this spoke of corruption and the lies the Artoria’s own terse Master suspected, but the Tohsaka man had not seemed to be so cunning as to hide his own fear of the danger that was now brewing to the world of everyday men, women, and  _ children _ in this city. He had called upon the Einzbern, believing Irisviel to be her Master - as she is in all but contract, a defiant part of her thinks - to form an alliance against the murderous threat that snatches children out of the street and turns their sometimes discovered bodies in macabre sacrifices to the devil. 

“I think you’re right,” she says softly to her prescribed ally after a moment. She folds her hands in her lap, looking down at the sleek black trousers that Irisviel had chosen for her. She squares her shoulders and moves to stand up from the church pew. 

“That’s a surprise!” the Archer exclaims with sudden, irreverent glee. He stands up right after her, but she turns and lifts her hand, bidding him to stop. He smirks at her, amused but compliant. 

“I think it will not make a difference because this War and ritual have been corrupted to their very core,” Artoria says to him. She glances around as she notices that her voice is echoing a bit more than it should in the broken sanctuary. She meets his eyes, finding that she must look up now to do so. “Our Masters kill one another. They kill those who are meant to keep the citizens safe. They have no regard for the lives of anyone around them and no sense of… honor at all,” she says to him, trying to make her stance clear as her hands tighten into fists. 

She closes her eyes to the sight of his careless smirk and instead sees the blood, rage, and anguish exploding across Lancer’s face as he had been forced to turn on himself by her own Master. Suddenly, she does not want to be near this other man, though she does not want to think about why it should make a difference. 

“Goodbye, Archer,” she says firmly. She turns away and walks heavily out of the church and into the night air. She knows that she will not go far from where Irisviel is meeting with her husband and the Tohsaka Master, but she has not been made privy to this meeting because of course Kiritsugu does not wish to hear her objections. 

She knows that if Archer does not wish to listen to her either that her trying to walk away from him will not do any good. He allows her to dream that he might know how to listen for a moment, though. She breathes in deeply, letting cool night air fill her lungs. She stands beside a lonely statue of the Virgin that is erected just outside the church. From the outside, the place seems less ugly and wrong. Whatever reverence she has for the place does not stop her from reaching out to let the heel of her hand rest against the base of the statue. She lets her exhale take some of the will from her body, allowing her to lean back just slightly. 

Then he is there. 

She remembers abruptly that he is not limited as she is. He is a proper Heroic Spirit, so he has the ability to vanish into the air and to rematerialize where he wills. She can only do this with her sword and not herself. She sighs and glances along the line of her shoulder, even higher up at him. 

“Why won’t you leave me alone?” she asks. It sounds like a childish question, but she feels that his pursuit is childish. At first, he had seemed to her a ravenous wolf who wished he only had a chance at devouring her, but now she sees him more like a salivating hound. He has some code, even if she does not know what Master he truly serves - only that it isn’t Tohsaka. 

“Why do you  _ leave me  _ alone, Saber?” he challenges her with a slight hiss at the end of his words. Looking at his eyes, she notices anew the snakelike slits of his pupils and wonders if he is truly some part demon. While she knows she was anything but a saint, she hopes that she would have better discernment if he were truly as  _ evil _ as he might seem at a simple glance. 

“Do you care?” she asks. 

“Oh, but of course I want your company. You are worthy of my attention in a way that no other person… yet alive is,” he says. 

The slight hesitation in his voice suddenly gives her a slight moment of insight into what has suddenly subdued him. It loops itself back in with her earlier suspicion. 

“You...cared… about… no, you  _ wanted _ Assassin’s Master for your own, didn’t you?” she asks. Her arms fold tightly over her chest, though she has very little to hide there. She still wants to shield herself from the strangeness of the realization, if it is indeed true. Suddenly she cannot stop looking at him, and maybe that is why she feels the need of a shield. 

“Just as you and I are much the same… you and he were much the same…” the Archer tells her. 

She straightens her posture and takes a small step back from him at this suggestion. It is enough to nearly put her at odds with him again. She is horrified by the notion, and yet the smile on his face is as false as any lie she has ever seen. She cannot let the words rest on their own, though. 

“I am  _ nothing _ like him. Whatever you wanted from him, I will give you nothing of the like. He… killed his own father, didn’t he?” 

“Probably,” the Archer says with a shrug. She breaks her gaze at last with the motion and looks out toward the gate of the churchyard. “I wonder if it made him… happy,” he ponders. 

“Why would it? Only a monster would be made happy by killing…” 

Then, suddenly, Artoria remembers herself. She stops. Her gaze goes blank, almost empty as she sees nothing but that hill. Those red battle clothes, stained redder with blood. Eyes so much like her own and the same yellow hair. She feels revulsion and nausea and tries to shake away them both. 

“You’re nothing like him?” the Archer asks as if prompting her to remember a conversation they’d lost the thread of. 

“Forget it, Archer, if you value your limbs,” she says a bit breathlessly. 

“Honestly, what I meant was that you both… deny… what would make you happy. You both… see joy as sin. For him… I think he may have been right, but as I told him… before he met his end…” the Archer continues, closing the space she has put between them with small, leisurely steps with each pause in his musing, “joy can be found in sin… or in righteousness. I find it hard to imagine that you would find your joy in sin, though whatever your joy is… I would love to see it.” 

Finally, he is so close that she finds that her chin is lifted high just to glare at him. Suddenly, her peripheral vision catches sight of something and she flinches to follow it only to be stopped in the motion by his hand. He places his bare hand on her cheek. His small finger touches her jaw, and the movement rights her to looking back up at his serpentine eyes - tempter, she thinks with derision. 

“Let go of me,” she says softly, shaking him off but only taking one step back. “Who are you to tell me what I deny or what I… affirm?” she scoffs at him. 

He raises his eyebrows just a little and chuckles softly at her. 

“Oh, of course… King of Knights,” he says. Then, with a slightly respectful nod of his head and a regal stance he finally tells her his name. “I am Gilgamesh.”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> In case it was confusing, this is basically a Fate/Zero AU where Risei died earlier and both Kirei and Lancer are dead. I like this concept as a way to shake up both what could happen in the plot and to put Gilgamesh and Artoria in a position where they might reasonably end up in alliance.


End file.
